26.4596, Review: Discourse; Historical Ling; Socioling: del Valle (2013)

Fri Oct 16 17:49:18 UTC 2015

LINGUIST List: Vol-26-4596. Fri Oct 16 2015. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 26.4596, Review: Discourse; Historical Ling; Socioling: del Valle (2013)

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Date: Fri, 16 Oct 2015 13:48:45
From: Mariana España-Rivera [marianaespana at yahoo.es]
Subject: A Political History of Spanish

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/24/24-3310.html

EDITOR: José  del Valle
TITLE: A Political History of Spanish
SUBTITLE: The Making of a Language
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2013

REVIEWER: Mariana España-Rivera, Universität Paderborn

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

“A Political History of  Spanish. The Making of a Language” edited and presented by José del Valle, is made up of a series of working papers that focus on the “metalinguistic discourses that, under different sets of ideological and material conditions, have produced politically relevant representations of Spanish” (p.19). The work falls within the field of study of language ideologies research (Blommaert 1999), a field of study that takes an historical approach to the social spaces and material conditions in which practices and metalinguistic discourses are deployed (p.15).

The book comprises twenty five essays from a group of authors from diverse geographical areas and disciplinary backgrounds. The essays are ordered into four parts or chapters. Each part is preceded by an introductory essay.

Part I presents an overall introduction; Part II focuses on the Spanish language in the Iberian Peninsula (essays 2–8); Part III focuses on Spanish in some Latin American countries or regions (essays 9–16); Part IV is about Spanish in the USA (essays 17–21); Part V (essays 22–25), presents three geographical areas where Spanish was present: in the Ottoman Empire, in Equatorial Guinea and in the Philippines. The book includes a list of references and an index.

PART I: THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS

In ESSAY 1, Del Valle outlines the development of ideas about language in Europe from the late 18th to the end of the 20th century, along with the contribution that North American academic research has defined as the intellectual framework that set the course leading to studies on metalinguistic discourse.

PART II: THE MAKING OF SPANISH: IBERIAN PERSPECTIVES

ESSAY 2 presents a thematic overview: “Introduction to the making of Spanish: Iberian perspectives” by Alberto Medina, Del Valle and Henrique Monteagudo.The emergence of a written system of language enables us to examine the role of language from its pragmatic and symbolic perspective, i.e. a glotto-political approach (p.29). This is also the reason why this book begins the historical arc with “the time when Spanish seems to have emerged as an object of discourse” (p.23). 

ESSAY 3 “The prehistory of written Spanish and the thirteenth-century nationalist zeitgeist” by Roger Wright is written in two parts. In the first part, he presents as his central thesis “the concept of Romance as a separate language from Latin followed the elaboration of the new written mode, rather than inspiring it” (p.39).  

The second part focuses on the 13th century. In the context of an important period of southward expansion by the Christian kingdoms, Wright emphasizes the pragmatic interest of King Alfonso X “in harmonizing, as far as he could, the legal systems” (p.42) in the common basis of a written Romance variety, hence allowing the “metalinguistic success of Romance in Castile” (p.42). This achievement culminated in his 'Fuero Real' in 1255, a work that collects and synthesizes several 'fueros' written in Romance from diverse areas, the so called “historical dialects” (Astur-Leonese, Galician, Castillian, Navarrese-Aragonese).

In ESSAY 4, “Language, nation and empire in early modern Iberia”, Miguel Martínez explores the spread of the Castilian language during the 16th and 17th centuries that develops alongside a complex network of political tensions. Castilian became the common language even among authors from other territories in the Peninsula, e.g. Portuguese or Catalan speakers that will use it as a “most effective and wide-reaching tool” (p.29). During the 16th century its usage spreads over other nations, becoming the most commonly spoken European language after Latin (p.54). 

In ESSAY 5, “The seventeenth-century debate over the origins of Spanish: links of language ideology to the Morisco question” Kathryn A. Woolard reveals the background ideologies surrounding the “Sacromonte forgeries,” by which an excluded minority –accused of maintaining the Arabic language and Islamic practices– shortly before their expulsion, claims that the Castilian language was written by their ancestors, the 'Moriscos', in the first-century. 

Woolard explores the ideologies underpinning this discussion in the context of political and ideological confrontations about the origins of Castilian among two linguistic thinkers of the epoch: Aldrete and López Madera. 

In ESSAY 6, “The institutionalization of language in eighteenth-century Spain”, Alberto Medina discusses the specific political conditions that led to the creation of Spain's first language academy the Real Academia Española (RAE) in 1713. Since then, the RAE has been the official institution in charge of ensuring the process of codification of the Spanish language, via the dictionary (1726-39), the orthography (1741) and the grammar (1771), all principal instruments of standardization.

The upheavals following the French Revolution soon spread out over to the rest of Europe and America. Along with “the assumption of a common political conscience” (p.27), the concept of a national language emerged. Since then, the existence of a common “national language” has been considered an indispensable element in the nation-building process.  
In ESSAY 7, “The officialization of Spanish in mid-nineteenth-century Spain: the Academy's authority”, Laura Villa addresses the role of the Spanish language in the context of the public school system. She contextualizes a public debate during the 1840s caused by a proposal to simplify the Spanish alphabet made by the ALCIP –a non-governmental organization of teachers (p.94). 

Political weight due in part to “privileged relation to and multiple connections with the government” (p.95) eventually assisted the RAE to officially implement its orthographic and grammatical norms as the standard in Spain's schools. Controversially, this official imposition faced strong resistance in schools. Finally, in 1853, the ALCIP, “source of instability and decadence”, was suppressed (p.102). 

ESSAY 8 “Spanish and other languages of Spain in the Second Republic” by Henrique Monteagudo. In April 1931 the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed. Among other priorities, the new coalition government devised a new constitution that gave the Spanish language “legal recognition as an official language” (p.107); another important issue, was to ensure the legal recognition of self-government to Spain's internal nations (Basque, Navarra, Galicia, Cataluña). This brought to the fore controversial discussions regarding bilingualism and the status of Castilian in relation to the other languages of Spain. 

Monteagudo analyses the debates that emerged from the legal recognition of self-government and the official recognition of other regional languages, their link to national identity and state organization, taking as references the prevailing ideological positions as represented in the discourses by three prominent intellectuals of that time: Unamuno, Menéndez Pidal and Sánchez Albornoz. 

PART III: THE MAKING OF SPANISH: LATIN AMERICAN AND TRANSATLANTIC PERSPECTIVES

In ESSAY 9, “Introduction to the making of Spanish: Latin American and Transatlantic perspectives”, Elvira Narvaja de Arnoux and Del Valle emphasize the importance of reflecting the history of Spanish from a “transatlantic” perspective in order to explore “the two-way circulation of metalinguistic discourses” (p.134) of political and cultural ideological interchange.  

In ESSAY 10, “Language, religion and unification in early colonial Peru”, Paul Firbas explores the impact of the “discovery” and the progress in appropriation of and control over the Americas that raised radical debates that would reshape the philosophic-theological-scientific principles of European knowledge in the following centuries. 

In the context of these ideological transformations, authors on both sides the Atlantic –Cabello Balboa, Gregorio García, Aldrete, Correas– felt inspired to “new discourses about the origin of the Castilian language and its political role” (p.141). Their ideas aimed to explain and further incorporate the overwhelming American linguistic landscape, perceived literally as of 'biblical dimensions' (Babylonian chaos, Tower of Babel, p.142ff) into a “unifying discourse of sacred cosmography” (p.146).

Within the process of national-state formation, the existence of a standard language becomes a requisite of building a modern state apparatus and the ideal vehicle for a lettered culture to prosper. This is the starting point for E. Narvaja de Arnoux in ESSAY 11, “Grammar and the state in the Southern Cone in the nineteenth century”.

She focuses on two pairs of school grammars that were devised during the first half of the 19th century after Independence. By comparing the first pair, Senillosa/Valdés, Narvaja concludes that their similarities outline “the Spanish American/transatlantic dimension of the independence process” (p.153) inasmuch as both articulate some typical ideas of Enlightenment thought, like rational criteria ('uniformity') and modern rationality ('simplicity', 'consistency'; p.154-5). The comparison of the second pair, Sánchez/Sastre,  supports the idea of Grammar as a tool for imposing a standard variety of common language in order to contribute “to grounding the nation-state in language” (p.165).

In ESSAY 12, “The politics of lexicography in the Mexican Academy in the late nineteenth century”, Bárbara Cifuentes explores the historical roots of the discussions about monocentric vs. pluricentric language criteria whose starting point was the creation of the Comisión de Academias Americanas Correspondientes de la Española (CAACE, 1870) – an institution that promotes the creation of subsidiary academies of the RAE in Spanish America. 

Cifuentes focuses on the role of Mexican historian, J. García Icazbalceta, a spokesman for the Mexican subsidiary, the AML (for Academia Mexicana de la Lengua) who, initially recognized the authority of the RAE as „the true depository of authority in matters of language“ (p.171) but  expressed disappointment at the lack of interest in provincialisms (local/regional words) after the publication of the “landmark” 12th edition of the RAE's dictionary (DRAE 12, 1884), because in his opinion, they offered “the empirical basis for understanding the evolution of Spanish in each of the Spanish American nations” (p.179). 

In ESSAY 13, “Language in the Dominican Republic: between Hispanism and Panamericanism”, Juan R. Valdez explores the relationship between language and national identity in the post-independent Dominican Republic, particularly the intellectual framework that emerged during the North American military occupation (1916-24) that steered them towards a cultural rebirth. 

He examines the role of Dominican historiographer Américo Lugo whose writings deeply influenced the work of philologist Pedro Henríquez Ureña (p.183). Like other intellectuals of the epoch (Andrés Bello, José Enrique Rodó) his linguistic representation supports the idea of Spanish “as a symbol of high culture” (p.196). 

In ESSAY 14, “Language diversity and national unity in the history of Uruguay”, Graciela Barrios compares two glottopolitical events, that “shared the aim of promoting and defending Spanish as a national language” (p.197). The first event took place in 1877 when the 'Decreto-Ley de Educación Común' [Decree-Law for General Education] was passed, and focussed its attention on combating the presence of the Portuguese-language on the northern border.

In the early 20th century, nation-building discourses enshrined “an elite democratic model of a white, educated European citizen” (p.211). In this context, the creation of the 'Academia Nacional de Letras' (Uruguay's language academy, ANL) in 1943 is interpreted as “an emblematic measure” (p.211) intended to protect the national language against “the social visibility of poor and illiterate European immigrants” and their languages (p.197). 

In ESSAY 15, “Language debates and the institutionalization of philology in Argentina in the first half of the twentieth century”, Guillermo Toscano analyses the work of two Argentinian intellectuals, Arturo Costa and Vicente Rossi, whose views on the River Plate language offered different theoretical and ideological positions from the one represented by the RAE's dictionary and the Spanish philologist working at the 'Instituto de Filología' established in Buenos Aires in 1922.   

Both authors criticize the monopoly of  linguistic authority held by the 'Instituto', the promotion of a philological model based on standardized Castilian Spanish and the mismatches between the Spanish model and the realities and demands of Argentine education and linguistics. 

In ESSAY 16, “Linguistic emancipation and the academies of the Spanish language in the twentieth century: the 1951 turning point”, Del Valle reveals some of the ideological representations surrounding the organization, development and discussions of the conference of all academies of the Spanish language held in April 1951 sponsored by the Mexican government. 

After the creation of the Associated Academies (CAACE) in 1870, Article 11 of its statutes specifically established the separation of literary activities “from any political objective” (p.241-2). However, the absence of the RAE in the conference provoked many discussions among academics about current institutional arrangements, specifically the preeminent position occupied by the Spanish Royal Academy vis-à-vis the American subsidiaries. In this context, the analysis of the various discourses on language and institutional struggles reveals the “deeply political nature of the conference” (p.242).

PART IV: THE MAKING OF SPANISH: US PERSPECTIVES

In ESSAY 17, “Introduction to the making of Spanish: US perspectives”, José del Valle and Ofelia García, summarize some key points in the history of Spanish in current US territories to highlight the links between glottopolitics and ideologies of national identity, expansionism and migration.  

Historically, Spanish was present in the US three centuries before English settlers expanded their borders to occupy most of the western territories that once belonged to the Spanish Crown and from 1821 to Mexico. During the initial phase of contact and transition for the newcomers it was of strategic value to have at least some elemental knowledge of Spanish (p.283) and even the Founding Fathers Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson “viewed Spanish as a valuable resource for commercial expansion” (p.251). Overtime, however, inasmuch as the Anglo settlements grew, Spanish slowly but surely lost its instrumental commercial value and –to some extent– its symbolic status (p.252).  

In ESSAY 18, “Language, church and state in territorial Arizona”, Elise M. DuBord reveals some ideological links between ethnolinguistic identity, culture and race that follow discussions about the establishment of the first Catholic schools (1870) and the opening of the first public schools (1872) in Tucson, the most influential city of the Arizona Territory at that time (p.260). While the first schools were intended to meet the needs of a Mexican Spanish speaking elite population, free public schooling prohibited religious teaching by law, and moreover, was intended to “serve as a medium for instilling American cultural values, order and the English language” (p.265).

In ESSAY 19, “The politics of Spanish and English in territorial New Mexico”, Arturo Fernández-Gibert analyses texts from the Spanish New Mexican press, published between 1850 and 1912 and emphasizes the relative roles of Spanish and English during the so called “Territorial period”.

After 1870 the presence of Jesuits impacted higher education and shaped the formation of a Neomexicano elite actively engaged into education and literacy. It also crystallized into a “booming Spanish-language press” (p.281). Education, literacy, and press were essential to the construction of an “imagined community” (Anderson 1991; p.282) that helped establish a long-term bond between heritage, identity and language within a Neomexicano community (p.288). Despite a complex political field of discrimination and educational policies that seeks to impose English-language monolingualism, the Neomexicano community has managed to survive throughout the twentieth-century with their own linguistic diversity (p.291-2). 

In ESSAY 20, “Public health and the politics of Spanish in early twentieth-century Texas”, Glenn A. Martínez studies the politics of language in the context of the modernization of the US public health institutions during the first half of the 20th century. 

In order to overcome “biosocial categorization” (Rose 2007; p.296) that associated Mexicans with disease, dirt and disorder, the author highlights the pioneering work of Ruben C. Ortega (p.299) who recognized the necessity of informing and educating the mostly illiterate Spanish-speaking communities about health and hygiene issues in alternative ways as well as in their own language.  
For didactic purposes, Ortega developed and implemented new teaching materials in Spanish although “using English health education traditions as a model” (p.301). Because of its benefit to society at large, in this particular case, the practical “instrumentalization” (p.301) of Spanish was seen positively and even celebrated by mainstream English-speaking society.

In ESSAY 21, “Categorizing Latinos in the history of the US Census: the official racialization of Spanish”, Jennifer Leeman examines the variety of different classifications used throughout the 200-year history of the US census to categorize Latinos.

She focuses on the ideological place of language in the race and Hispanic-origin questions and on the historical use of language questions in the classification of Latinos. Despite a growing percentage of English monolinguals or English-dominant bilinguals, for Latinos in the US “a link between Spanish and 'Latinidad' remains taken for granted” (p.305). By exploring the language ideologies embodied in the official categories, Leeman eventually demonstrates “the discursive role of Spanish in the portrayal of US Latinos as racial others unable or unwilling to assimilate into the dominant culture” (p.308).

PART V: THE MAKING OF SPANISH BEYOND SPAIN AND THE AMERICAS

ESSAY 22, “Introduction to the making of Spanish beyond Spain and the Americas” by Mauro Fernández and José del Valle. While this last part may give the impression of some structural inconsistency, the authors stress the fact that the topics dealt with in this section reveal some of the most productive lines for “thinking Spanish as a historical construction” (p.327) because their perspective looks “beyond” traditional areas of convergence or sequential chronological order. 

ESSAY 23, “The status of Judeo-Spanish in the Ottoman Empire” by Yvette Bürki. 
After their expulsion  from the Iberian kingdoms at the end of the 15th century, a great number of Sephardic Jews settled in the Ottoman Empire where they were warmly welcomed. They continued to pass their Hispanic tongue on for generation after generation, and this marked the beginning of the history of Judeo-Spanish. 

The authoress focuses on the work of Sam Lévy who presented a technical and ideological elaboration of Judeo-Spanish in order to change its status from “vernacular” into a cultivated language (p.329) in the multilingual context of the Ottoman Empire, where it had to coexist with Hebrew, Greek, Turkish and French. Lévy presented and defended his ideas in a series of lectures that were published in “La Época”, a Salonica newspaper (p.329). In this context, the press played a crucial role for the consolidation and spread of an “elaborated” language (p.347). 

ESSAY 24, “Language and the hispanization of Equatorial Guinea” by Susana Castillo Rodríguez reviews the presence of Spanish in Equatorial Guinea during two specific periods during which the Spanish language was instrumentalized for the purposes of “colonization and cultural assimilation” (p.360).

The first one comprises the period of the arrival of Catholic missions (1848–1917). The author identifies the difficulties that Spanish faced in order to access the region due to the predominance of English and the official steps taken to formalise the use of Spanish as the official language of education (p.358). The second part addresses the period of colonial rule under the Franco regime until its declaration as a province of Spain (1939–58). The Spanish language served as a tool for the political indoctrination of the natives into Francoist values, which in turn revealed hispanization to be a means of achieving the national Catholic project of Spain under Franco (p.362).

ESSAY 25, “The representation of Spanish in the Philippine Islands” by Mauro Fernández discusses the Filipino local elite's emotional attachment to Spanish (p.364). The author analyses the role of the Spanish language as “defining element” (p.371) in the context of a Hispanic-Filipino identity, despite comprehensible ambivalence towards Spain after 1898, the arrival of the US and the imminent establishment of English as the primary language in the Philippines (p.378-9).

EVALUATION

This Political History of Spanish is the product of a collaborative effort by an international team of academics and offers a very comprehensive and refreshing insight into the complex field of glottopolitical studies.

The book provides the reader with an overview of how Spanish has been conceptualized throughout a multilayered historic context, being enriched by controversial ideologies (e.g. colonialism, nationalism) and overlapping dynamics (dominance/subalternity; discipline/rebellion; settlement/migration). It also delivers a solid basis for the further development of trans-area approaches (Ette 2011; p.20), for which, as this book demonstrates, a re-thinking of methodological and epistemological premises is required.  

Del Valle emphasizes that the book's leitmotif is to follow an integrated, multidisciplinary approach (p.18ff). This it achieves. Every essay offers a new line of enquiry and points the way forward to how the external history of the Spanish language ought to be discussed in the future. As academics we have a commitment to offer the best possible explanations for the development of languages, and this book offers a very valuable starting point as it provides a variety of new perspectives on an old subject.

REFERENCES

Blommaert, Jan (ed.). 1999. “The debate is open”. In. Language ideological debates. (Language, power and social process 2). Berlin ; New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 1-38.

Brumme, Jenny; Bochmann, K. (eds.). 1993. Sprachpolitik in der Romania: zur Geschichte sprachpolitischen Denkens und Handelns von der Französischen Revolution bis zur Gegenwart. Berlin: DeGruyter.

Coupland, Nikolas (ed.). 2010. Introduction: Sociolinguistics in the Global Era. In: The handbook of language and globalization. UK: Blackwell handbooks in linguistics. 1-27.

Del Valle, José; Gabriel/Stheeman, Luis. 2002. Nationalism, hispanismo, and monoglossic culture. In: The battle over Spanish between 1800 and 2000: language ideologies and Hispanic intellectuals. Del Valle, José (ed.). (Routledge studies in the history of linguistics 4). London: Routledge. 1-13.

Del Valle, José, Hrsg. 2007. Glotopolítica, Ideología y Discurso: Categorías para el estudio del estatus simbólico del español. In: La lengua, ¿patria común?: Ideas e ideologías del español. (Lengua y sociedad en el mundo hispánico 17). Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert. 13-29.

Joseph, John Earl. 2006. Language and politics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press. 

Langer, Nils (ed). 2012. Language and history, linguistics and historiography: interdisciplinary approaches. (Studies in historical linguistics 9). Oxford: Lang.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Mariana España is a lecturer at the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Paderborn (Germany). She earned a M.A. in Romance Linguistics, Musicology and European and Latin American Art History from the University of Heidelberg. Her teaching and research interests include Applied Linguistics, Historical Linguistics and Latin American Cultural Studies.

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